Friday, February 27, 2015

After 85 hours, a broken computer desk and a sore hand from all the pounding on said computer desk I finished Saints Row 4. The experience was both awful and cool. That's how this game goes being maddeningly frustrating then suddenly becoming a hilarious romp.Once I figured out the "super powers" thing I found it a lot more enjoyable to dispatch the hordes of alien baddies but when forced to veer back to "Nintendo land" for a few side missions it became a grind.Still, I wouldn't have spent 85 seconds in Saints Row 4 if I wasn't enjoying the experience. The hard parts were always rewarded and that's the mark of a good game.That's a lot of setup for a video blog entry....So here ya go, the endgame of Saints Row 4.

Friday, February 13, 2015

Ok, that's obvious but what isn't is something new. That being, the fact that I actually enjoyed
making them.

I've been a Battlefield player since the days of Battlefield 1942. To be honest it was my favorite game in the series
for a long time mostly due to Dice's release of a then "unofficial"
mod for the game called Modern Combat.

It was that mod to an already great game that laid the foundation
for every Battlefield to come after
it. Battlefield
2, Bad Company, Battlefield 3 and 4 all followed the formula of huge maps
set in a modern setting. Yes I left out
2142 mostly due to that game being more of an aberration than a successor to Battlefield
games. Proof being that the major
releases after it returned to a less "whimsical" premise of staying
within 20 years of present day.

World War 2 was abandoned by Battlefield long ago (except for the Play4Free version) leaving
such well traveled ground to other games like Medal of Honor and Call of
Duty.

While Battlefield games have become better looking, full
featured and more engrossing they haven't been immune to the distractions of DLC
disease and profit over polish. Just
like its primary competition, Activision's Call of Duty series, Premium
subscriptions, seemingly endless DLC and "shortcut" kits have made
good games often little more than cash cows for their publisher. Which has led to rushed development and
release of what was essentially games still in a beta phase at launch. A condition that culminated in a near
disastrous launch of Battlefield 4 even
going so far as to inspire litigation against its publisher, EA.

So when I heard about a new branch of the Battlefield family
coming online last fall (Battlefield:
Hardline) I was interested to see if EA and Dice had learned their lessons
from all the missteps of Battlefield 4.

During the closed (later open) beta of the initial candidate
of this new Battlefield game I saw promise but also saw many of the same issues
from the Battlefield 4 codebase that
it shared. Wall hacks, a screwed up kill
cam and problems with hit registers were all present and accounted for.

In short the game was Battlefield
4 with cops and robbers. An
interesting premise but other than some cool new gimmicks like the zip-line,
the game was far from ready for prime time.

The difference with this Beta, however, was that EA listened
to feedback and pushed the release date from Fall 2014 to spring of 2015. EA didn't need another billion dollar
disaster and the newly minted
Dice L.A. studios (now responsible for Battlefield games) didn't want to have
its first release fall on its face.

So here we are half a year later and EA offers up another
beta release of Battlefield: Hardline. So the burning question for anyone who'd
played the original beta was, had anything changed?

I admit that I'm somewhat of a curmudgeon when it comes to
hype. I hate it and I hold a deep seated
belief that the level of hype for anything is inversely proportional to the
quality of whatever's being hyped.

It's a formula that worked for just about every game
released in the past 5 years and I have no intention of changing my view. While EA is promoting the game and offering
the same old overpriced "Pre-Orders" that it has in the past, the
hype machine is set somewhere around medium.

In other words, my formula is working perfectly. The original beta heavily hyped the game and
in a word it was mediocre at best. This
time around things are different.

In the videos this old grumbling gamer actually had to admit
the game wasn't that bad, at least in Beta.
For one thing there were 3 different play modes; Heist, Hotwire and a
classic conquest mode. There was also a
mode akin to Battlefield 4's Commander mode called Hacker that was far more
entertaining than similar modes in previous Battlefield games.

In one of the videos I actually said, "I'm having a
hard time not liking this game."

That's high praise from me especially when we're talking
about Battlefield games. If the final
release on March 17th is at least as good as the beta experience this may breathe
new life into the franchise.

A picture is indeed worth 1000 words so rather than try to
fight the cliché I invite you to watch some moving pictures as I explore the
2015 edition of Battlefield: Hardline
Beta.

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

I don't claim to have the latest gaming news or any hot tips. Even when I was doing weekly gaming reports the few "scoops" I had only came after experiencing something myself. Otherwise I was aggregating news.But then, so does everyone else including the Kotakus, Gamespots and IGN's out there. Gaming news and information is almost always many, many hands away from even second hand information.So if you see me write up my experiences about an older game it's only because I'm actually playing it and may have found something new.Something that got passed over in the rush of the 24 hour deadline at launch and the ensuing frivolity to objectify an entirely subjective topic.Let's face it, Nobody who actually plays a game really cares about new physics engines or map design. They just want to have a good experience when they get past that first loading screen.Sure, all that stuff is part of what makes a good game but how good it is rests entirely with you.That's how I approach gaming and what I'm thinking when I do a game video.So, that said, I've included a few new videos of my latest adventures with Sonic & All Stars Racing Transformed. This time, however, I managed to get my opponent's experiences on the same screen.Check it out and let me know what you think.Thanks...

Wednesday, February 4, 2015

It's a strange time of year.
All the interesting stuff is over and the only holidays anyone is
looking forward to are the banks. Valentine's
day and Easter are just marketing exercises.
Saint Patrick's day is just another excuse to get drunk.

So with the real holidays behind us (and I include the
SuperBowl in that) we enter prime gaming season. A time of the year when we should be buckling
down and leveling up.

Which is exactly what I've been doing in the world of Saints
Row 4. Yes, I'm aware of GTA 5 but for
now I'll have to resign myself to watching Neebs' videos of it on
YouTube.

To that end I've selected a few videos from my channel, The
Real Dudz Fryd, where myself and Shotglass (a frequent co-op gaming buddy)
explore the simulated world of SteelPort.